A narrative history of the writing of “This Land Is Your
Land” and “God Bless America” that uncovers the conflicts and common ground
between two classic patriotic songs

February, 1940. After a decade of worldwide depression,
World War II had begun in Europe and Asia. With Germany on the march and Japan
at war with China, the global crisis was in a crescendo. America’s top
songwriter, Irving Berlin, had captured the nation’s mood a little more than a
year before with his patriotic hymn “God Bless America.”

Woody Guthrie was having none of it. Near-starving and
penniless, he was traveling from Texas to New York to make a new start. As he
eked his way across the country by bus and by thumb, he couldn’t avoid Berlin’s
song. Some people say that it was when he was freezing by the side of the road
in a Pennsylvania snowstorm that he conceived of a rebuttal. It would encompass
the dark realities of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, and it would begin
with the lines “This land is your land, this land is my land.”

In This Land That I
Love, John Shaw writes the dual biography of these beloved American songs.
Examining the lives of their authors, he finds that Guthrie and Berlin had more
in common than either could have guessed. Though Guthrie’s image was defined by
train-hopping, Irving Berlin had also risen from homelessness, having worked
his way up from the streets of New York.

At the same time, This
Land That I Love sheds new light on our patriotic musical heritage, from
“Yankee Doodle” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” to Martin Luther King’s
recitation from “My Country ’Tis of Thee” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
in August 1963. Delving into the deeper history of war songs, minstrelsy,
ragtime, country music, folk music, and African American spirituals, Shaw
unearths a rich vein of half-forgotten musical traditions. With the aid of
archival research, he uncovers new details about the songs, including a
never-before-printed verse for “This Land Is Your Land.” The result is a
fascinating narrative that refracts and reenvisions America’s tumultuous
history through the prism of two unforgettable anthems.

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Quotes & Awards

“John Shaw, who has written about
music for various publications, attacks his subject with the enthusiasm of a
fan and the dedication of a scholar…Shaw has much to say about the lives and
careers of Berlin and Guthrie and about the musical traditions from which they emerged.
(He is particularly insightful about Guthrie’s debt to the country-music
pioneers the Carter Family)…When he sticks to his subject—as when he examines
the distinctly American strain of mysticism at the heart of both “God Bless
America” and “This Land Is Your Land”—Shaw can be entertaining and informative.”

New
York Times Book Review

“Engaging…Shaw wields an impressive
grasp of American musical history.”

Boston
Globe

“The juxtaposition of two of America’s most enduring national anthems. The beginning of this provocative history of Woody Guthrie’s persistent folk song and elementary school staple “This Land is Your Land” and Irving Berlin’s overly sentimental “God Bless America” is a visceral scene.”

Kirkus Reviews

“[Shaw] is particularly good at
nailing down the melodic ancestors for these great American anthems and for
tracing the various revisions Berlin and Guthrie made to their songs along the
way…This Land That I Love traverses,
in a relatively small number of pages, the whole canvas of America.”

Slate

“[Shaw] effectively connects [‘This Land Is Your Land’] to earlier
anthems…Ultimately, This Land That I Love
is about more than two songs or the two men who created them.”

Daily
Beast

“In telling the stories of those unofficial US national anthems…Shaw tells those of most of their predecessors, too, including the official one, ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’…The recommended listening essay is full of fascination.

Booklist

“Shaw…traces the similarities
between Berlin’s and Guthrie’s upbringings, comparing some of the forces that
may have led each writer to what would eventually become his most recognizable
song.”

Publishers
Weekly

“Within a frame of the deepest
familiarity, John Shaw rescues forgotten stories and excavates stories never
told before. The book is generous, open, questing, and blazingly incisive: with
a sentence, maybe two or three, he gets to the heart of such unsolved mysteries
as blackface, the concept of folk, or the loop of celebrity and history in
modern life.”

Griel Marcus, music critic and author of Mystery Train and Lipstick Traces

“John Shaw analyzes the songs ‘God
Bless America’ and ‘This Land Is Your Land’ and the men who wrote them, Irving
Berlin and Woody Guthrie. Occasionally, Traber Burns’ reading of the lyrics of
these familiar songs sounds a little bit odd; they should be sung, after all.
There’s also some discomforting dialect, since Berlin used racial and ethnic
themes in songs earlier in his career. Still, this is an engaging reading, with
particularly good voice work on historical figures like Teddy Roosevelt. It
brings listeners into the world that Berlin and Guthrie worked in. With the
additional examination of the earlier ‘Yankee Doodle,’ listeners get a good
look at the American psyche through music.”

About the Author

John Shaw has written on music and theater for the LA Review of Books and Chicago Reader. He has written more than 250 songs, including music and lyrics for three full-length and numerous short plays that have been produced in Seattle, Chicago, and elsewhere. He lives in Seattle.

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